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Scientists studying images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have discovered the remains of an ancient Martian lake.

The Martian surface is in the middle of a 600 million year long drought - and right now is almost too dry for life to exist on its surface. That said, over the past decade, there has been an enormous amount of evidence that water once flowed freely on the ancient surface of Mars. And that case has been bolstered yet again, as scientists studying images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, a satellite that takes pictures of the Martian surface from orbit using a variety of different tools.

As researchers studied images of the McLaughlin Crater, a crater 57-miles across and 1.4 miles deep that formed as the result of an impact with a large meteor, they noticed sedimentary rocks. Spectroscopic images of those rocks taken with the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) showed that they were composed of minerals that only form in the presence of water. Detailed studies of the surface indicate that these were formed by a lake caused by the flow of underground water that periodically made its way to the bottom of the crater.

"Taken together, the observations in McLaughlin Crater provide the best evidence for carbonate forming within a lake environment instead of being washed into a crater from outside," said lead researcher Joseph Michalski in a press release. "A number of studies using CRISM data have shown rocks exhumed from the subsurface by meteor impact were altered early in Martian history, most likely by hydrothermal fluids. These fluids trapped in the subsurface could have periodically breached the surface in deep basins such as McLaughlin Crater, possibly carrying clues to subsurface habitability."

This find is just one more piece of the puzzle about what Mars looked like hundreds of millions of years ago, when there was water on the surface. This finding may also teach scientists more about the potential for whether life exists - or ever existed - on the Red Planet.

"This new report and others are continuing to reveal a more complex Mars than previously appreciated, with at least some areas more likely to reveal signs of ancient life than others," said scientist Rich Zurek in the release.